Michael Gelber, a longtime American educator, camp director and sports coach who devoted his life to mentoring Jewish youth and strengthening their connection to Israel, died in a hospice in Israel on Jan. 8 at the age of 70.
Gelber, who made aliyah with his wife to Beit Shemesh from the United States in October 2021, was born on June 15, 1955, in Buffalo, N.Y., and raised in nearby Kenmore. He spent decades shaping generations of students through Jewish summer camps, day schools and athletics, while modeling a life centered on Torah study and giving to others.
“He lived to help people become better versions of themselves,” his wife of 40 years, Susan Gelber, told JNS. “Everything he did was about directing people toward Hashem and toward kindness.”
The Gelbers moved to Israel after their son, Dovid, and their daughter, Rebecca Gelber-Silberman, and her family settled in Beit Shemesh. They celebrated being with their extended family, including four granddaughters, and their son’s marriage in October 2023.
For more than four decades, Gelber was a central figure at Camp Seneca Lake in Pennsylvania, where he served in key roles, including boys’ head counselor and assistant director. He oversaw sports, night activities, trips and programming, and became a trusted mentor to countless campers.
“He ran the camp,” Dovid Gelber said. “But more than that, he shaped the kids.”
Even after leaving Camp Seneca Lake, Gelber continued working with young people, most recently as a traveling tween counselor at Flatbush Park Day Camp, leading daily trips and overnights.
He was also deeply involved in athletics at Yeshiva Flatbush, where he coached teams, worked in adaptive physical education and served for years in senior roles within the school’s sports programs.
Defining moment
A defining moment early in Gelber’s life helped shape his outlook. In his 20s, he was struck by Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition that can quickly become fatal if untreated. Doctors at Long Island Jewish Hospital placed him on a respirator just in time.
While recuperating from the illness typically takes years, Gelber made a remarkably swift and complete recovery, walking out of the hospital within months with no lasting effects in 1980.
His family attributes that recovery not only to medical intervention but also to his Jewish faith, boosted by a blessing and an amulet sent by the revered kabbalist Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzera, known as Baba Sali.
That episode, his son believes, deepened his father’s sense of purpose and gratitude.
Years later, during a basketball trip to Israel with a Yeshiva Flatbush team in 1990, Gelber would create a connection that endured for decades. Visiting the impoverished development town of Azzata, near Netivot, he was moved by the hospitality of locals who gave the visiting American students blankets, heaters and pillows—items they themselves desperately needed.
Gelber instructed his players to give back whatever they could spare. One student handed his new basketball sneakers to a young boy named Shay Cohen, who was born in 1980.
That gesture began a lifelong relationship. Gelber stayed in touch with Cohen, brought him and his siblings to the United States to attend summer camp, and maintained close ties with the family over the years.
During a later visit to Israel, Gelber discovered that the grave of Joel Braverman—after whom Yeshiva Flatbush’s high school is named—was located next to Baba Sali’s resting place, another connection that struck him as deeply meaningful.
‘Everything came together’
In a final moment that his family views as miraculous, Cohen and the former Flatbush student who had donated the sneakers decades earlier visited Gelber together in hospice, arriving independently at the same time. It was the last night Gelber was fully lucid, his son said. Unable to speak, he blew them kisses.
“Everything came together,” Dovid Gelber said. “That was who he was.”
Michael Gelber was an avid reader of the Jewish News Syndicate website. “JNS was Michael’s connection to the Jewish world,” his wife said. “Throughout the week, he would collect and print articles to read on Shabbat, and that was something he truly cherished.”
Gelber received multiple awards for excellence in education and athletics, among them the New York City Public Schools’ Physical Education Award in 1988.
“He didn’t seek recognition,” Susan Gelber told JNS. “He just gave—and taught others to do the same.”
